In the early 1900's there were only 235,000 Natives left & it's taken us all that time to repopulate due to ongoing efforts to eliminate the "Indian problem" in addition to the impact of racism, poverty, etc. Today, our population is 5 million, roughly the same as Metro Detroit.
This is important to know when talking about the impact of COVID19 on Native communities because when you look at the #'s alone, it is easy to dismiss them because they seem low compared to the #'s for other communities.
indiancountrytoday.com/news/indian-co…
indiancountrytoday.com/news/indian-co…
Native peoples account for 2% of the entire U.S. population. So, you can't just look at the #'s, you have to look at the scale of our population compared to others to understand the impact.
About 3 years ago, I talked about looking at the scale in regards to the # of missing and murdered Indigenous women in relation to the # of missing and murdered from other communities.
When you consider the scale of our population to the population of other communities, 1 native death is the equivalent to roughly
1077 deaths in the White community, 143 deaths in the Black community,
61 deaths in the Asian community
192 deaths in the Latino community
1077 deaths in the White community, 143 deaths in the Black community,
61 deaths in the Asian community
192 deaths in the Latino community
It's important to understand this, to take into consideration the size of our population because the way it is hitting Native communities, it has the potential to wipe out entire tribes, to reduce our population so drastically while eliminating important ancestral knowledge.
This is why Natives really need to start taking this seriously, cuz yes our ancestors survived worst but they did so by being smart, adaptable and putting the well-being of their people above everything else.
They did everything in their power to protect each other, we need to be doing the same.
